Monday, March 03, 2008

You've probably all already seen this, but

If you haven't read the drivel Charlotte Allen wrote for yesterday's Washington Post, take a look (if you're in the mood for a lot of anger). Feministing (and every other blog in the known world) has been covering it very closely. The article, titled, "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" is about why women are so dumb. Seriously. That's the whole thing. That, and lamenting why we insist on trying to be smart when we should just make lovely homes and be tender to children and men. While the whole misogynistic women thing is a school of thought that I don't understand, I'm aware that it exists. I don't get it. But, if you must, go nuts, self-loathing-ladies! I just can't believe that the Post would actually print such a thing. After receiving loads of angry letters to the editor (mine among them), they thought that diluting the teaser headline a bit would make everything better. So now we've gone from being stupid to just acting stupid. Thanks, WaPo! That fixes everything.I should have included some of these links at first, but, followthebouncingball of outrage around the web. Ezra sums up exactly why the Post shouldn't have published the piece:

The author is not a neuroscientist nor even a psychologist. She's a provocateur, and a professional anti-feminist, and the editors at the Post were so enamored by the brashness of her argument that they gave no thought to either its truth or her familiarity with the relevant research. This is an article in which intelligence is compared, I shit you not, by comparing head sizes and driving records. It would be laughable if it were sitting on the reject pile. Instead, it's shameful, and the Post owes its readers an apology. Not, I hasten to add, because the thesis was so daring and our tender sensibilities must be soothed. But because the work was so shoddy and the author so poorly chosen. An op-ed page can only exist so long as the reader can trust the paper's judgment in assignments. That's what this piece calls into question.